In our house we dearly love our menagerie of furry and finned friends. However there’s a reason why the four-legged furry ones are affectionately known as dickhead number one, dickhead number two and you guessed it, dickhead number three.

A bit of context here, dickhead number 1 (henceforth D#1), is my oldest bestie – my husband hating cat. Technically JC is his step-dad as I got him in a previous relationship, but I’ve always been his favourite. Every morning without fail, he tries to kill/seriously injure JC as he goes down the stairs. Every evening he faithfully parks on or around me and refuses to move, especially for JC. D#1 is also the reason I have so many special threads (fur…) ingrained in my cross stitching and is also the reason for several wipes in MMOs across the years and has also sabotaged significant single player moments too.

Speaking of too… that leads nicely on to dickhead number 2 (you guessed it – D#2). D#2 is the baby of the bunch (though not by age anymore) and a traitor. About 4 or 5 years into D#1 making an appearance he started to lick himself bald and nothing we tried would stop it. We came to the conclusion it was separation anxiety as he was so attached to me but I had to work and not be a 24/7 cat mum/slave. In waltzed D#2 who I couldn’t bond with at first (he smelled funny, D#1 smells amazing), but he won me over quickly with his affection and his voice. He kind of sounds like a low vocal range raptor where as D#1 kind of quacks. You can also hold amazing conversations with him. After ‘the breakup’ I retained kitty custody and JC appeared on the scene. The baby bonded with him straight away and they dote on each other. Which is lovely, don’t get me wrong, it melts my cold dark heart a little. However, I’d already put in over 2 years of solid care, devotion and love and the little traitor literally lets JC pick him up and rock him like a baby. He’ll listen to JC and climb up him when he asks. Does he do that for me? As if! I know I’m special though as he fetches me bits of cardboard to play with and if I throw stuff, and he’s in the mood, he’ll play fetch with me.

Photo of D#2, my brown tonkinese cat.
Literally brought me cardboard while I was typing.

I love dickhead number 3 dearly (I’m not going to insult you…); however, I won’t lie, there are moments of ‘did we do the right thing’. These are so much less so now he’s getting older (a year next week!) but we introduced a furry little whirlwind of a puppy into our happy balanced household and dont we know it! Hes amazingly cute (I’m biased but he’s a corgi so it’s a fact) and very smart. D#3 also has a typical corgi attitude, is ridiculously demanding and sheds like a mofo for what I assume is 12 months out of the year. We’re 9 months into life with a dog; the biggest things I’ve learned are, puppy blues is legit a thing, it’s definitely a different experience to owning cats and D#3 brings me immense joy and is basically my furry baby substitute.

Photo of D#3 and D#1 sharing a pet bed in a rare moment of peace.
Technically this is the dog’s bed… try telling the cat that…

Those moments of immense joy are juxtaposed some days with moments of ‘what have you done?!’ or more aptly ‘what did we do?!’. Two days ago was one of those days. I’d smugly finished and posted about the stupid unicorn. I’d also done a couple of Instagram posts (craftyroguegamer if you’re interested) showing my haul of new cross stitch paraphernalia:

Photo of accessories including new needles, storks scissors, fabric scissors and a needle holder resting on a tablet with a galaxy design on the cover.

The other Insta post was a quick snap of my next project which will be a whole lot geekier and quicker than the accursed unicorn. I was all prepped and really looking forward to starting it and making a decent dent in it that day:

White, black, dark grey and light grey thread skiens resting on 18 count aida. There also a red thread on a bobbin, stork scissors and a needle minder in the shape of zero from 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' film.

After that picture was taken I had to do some work for a few hours, so I left things where they were on my laptop on the sofa. Not a problem, D#1 was snoozing and doesn’t give a toss about thread, D#2 who does try to play with them occasionally would be upstairs either on the landing or on the office with us (JC lover that he is) and the puppy is basically my shadow. D#3 would possibly wander downstairs but if he disturbed the sleeping D#1 he’d get bopped (smashed on the nose with a cat paw, claw extension to be determined on impact) and we’d hear it.

A few hours later my confidence and complacency proved to be sorely misplaced. Only the black thread remained intact in its original state. The greys and white each resembled some horrific Crystal Maze-esque moist, tangled mess. After the initial sinking WTAF moment, the frustrated rage took over and I needed to find the culprit. D#1 is a dick, but he’s lazy, hadn’t moved and genuinely doesn’t care for playing with threads so he was out. D#2 got the initial blame, he’s got form for doing this previously. That was until we sniffed the threads and got an unmistakable whiff of ‘eau de dog breath’. When presented with the evidence and asked WTAF was this, he gave me a look that I’ve seen a hundred times before on dog shaming pictures…

In my rush to salvage the threads I didn’t get a picture of the evidence (or the look of shame); they were that disgusting I didn’t really want to touch my phone at the same time to be honest. I washed and dried them as quickly as I could. They then got untangled and wound on bobbins which is a pretty mean feat with a fibro flare. I get scorching hot painful hands with crazy joint pain and a claw-like appearance (they look as great as they sound!). The finished result (the threads not the flare) is now this, which isn’t bad considering the state they were in.

Layout of materials as in the previous photo, now with the threads washed, dried and transferred to paper bobbins.

Now that I’ve sulked for a day or two about not being able to have anything nice without it getting ruined; I’m probably over myself enough to actually start stitching it at some point. In D#3’s defence it was my fault to be fair. I’d gotten complacent and forgotten one of the number one rules of puppy raising that if he can reach it, he probably thinks he can play with it (and even if you’ve told him he can’t, he probably will!).

In other exciting news where something nice didn’t suck, I’ve heard back today about recovering my Star Wars and ESO accounts (damn you crap memory and old ISP email address that I can’t access). I’ve remembered enough about my past self to credibly answer -really- out of date security questions and got access back which I’m very happy about. They’ll both play nicely on my new gaming PC that my lovely husband sponsored and built to bribe me into coming into the office more. I’m sure one of the dickheads will take the shine off it by peeing on it (D#3), vomming on it (D#1) or stuffing cardboard into moving parts (D#2). But for now this post is long enough, I’ll catch up about the office saga and bribery PC next time.